A self-driving technology company started by two former Uber execs has raised $9 million in venture capital and formed a partnership with a Ford Motor Co. business unit to provide software that gives routing instructions to autonomous vehicles.
San Francisco-based RideOS announced the deals on June 15, including the Series A funding that was led by Sequoia Capital and also included investments from Graph Ventures and SV Angel. The company has begun partnering with Ford-owned Automatic on the mapping and navigation initiative.
The startup was founded in June of 2017 by Justin Ho and Chris Blumenberg, who met at Uber Technologies Inc., where they developed self-driving vehicle technology.
The RideOS platform provides real-time services through the cloud and includes autonomous vehicle routing, estimated time-of-arrival calculations, dispatch, supply positioning, multiple-rider trip planning, and fleet management dashboards.
Autonomic, which was acquired by Ford Smart Mobility earlier this year, has created the first open cloud-based mobility platform to connect mobility systems.
"Autonomic's partnership with rideOS is the natural next step toward accelerating the creation of safe and sustainable self-driving fleets," said Gavin Sherry, Autonomic's chief executive. "By integrating with rideOS' routing engine, Autonomic is able to provide customers with technology to enable self-driving fleets and connected vehicles."
